ASUS XG Station Pro Review – Cool, Calm and Collected

Introduction

One of the most highly anticipated eGPU enclosures of 2017 was the ASUS ROG XG Station 2. Its spec sheet was filled with many standout features unmatched by worthy competitors. When I finally got my hands on one to review, it was definitely out of this world but not in a good way. The ultimate undoing of that powerful enclosure was the placement of its 680W fATX power supply next to the GPU. It would run loud and hot, subsequently overheating the graphics card inside. Not to be ignored was the staggering cost; it was the most expensive eGPU enclosure to date, retailing for more than $600 at launch.

To address those shortcomings ASUS completely redesigned its newest eGPU enclosure, the XG Station Pro. They set out to build a premium yet affordable external graphics enclosure that not only runs cool but also remains quiet. This was going to be a daunting task. Let’s find out if they succeeded.

Unlike the wild design and multiple lighting zones of its older sibling, the ASUS XG Station Pro sports a more clean cut, purposeful look. The Station Pro is geared toward professional uses rather than strictly gaming purposes. ASUS partnered with InWin to produce a handsome enclosure. The shell and panels are made of aluminum, anodized in space gray to pair well with the MacBook Pro. The inner cage is sheet metal construction. This makes for a light chassis that feels solid to the touch. Minimal branding is imprinted on the right panel, while a small XG Station logo is placed on the front. Rear ports are two USB-C receptacles, a Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps) on the left and a USB 3.1 gen 2 (10Gbps) on the right. Located above them are the power plug and power button.

You won’t find fancy metal hinges for sideway opening of the body panels or the lava lampesque plasma tube in this enclosure as in the XG Station 2. Componentwise the ASUS XG Station Pro is stripped down to the essentials. There are three main panels that are easily removable without any tools. The UNLOCK latch at the top rear allows the top panel to slide backward and out. Once the top panel is off, the two side panels can slide upward and off the enclosure cage. The side panel’s vent cutout design maximizes airflow, and there’s even a nifty mesh filter insert that helps minimize dust buildup on the GPU’s fans. Also to note is that you can run this enclosure without the side panel installed to showcase the graphics card.

The decision to go with an external AC power adapter is crucial to keep thermal and noise levels in check. ROG’s parts bin contains many intriguing components, and the 330W (19.5V≈16.9A) power brick for this ASUS XG Station Pro is a good example. It’s about the size of the Dell DA-2, a popular AC adapter our eGPU community has used to build custom external GPU setups, yet produces much higher output. The proprietary connector is bulky and looks a bit out of place due to the ROG branding on the backside. It’s well-built though and keeps the connector securely in place.

ASUS prioritized performance when setting the max power to the graphics card. They opted for a minimal 15W Power Delivery to the Thunderbolt 3 host so that much of the AC adapter’s output goes to the graphics card (300W). Upon seeing the demo unit at CES 2018 running an ASUS Strix GTX 1080 Ti, I guessed this might have been the case. It’s a compromise that prevents charging Thunderbolt 3 laptops, but perfect is the enemy of good. I prefer to have the ability to pair the most powerful graphics card rather than charge a laptop. As seen in the featured photos, this ASUS XG Station Pro can power the GTX 1080 Ti without issue. I’ve also used an RX Vega 56 with this enclosure and it worked well.

Speaking of power-hungry graphics cards, we’ve learned that for certain beastly GPUs 300W output may not be enough. Case in point is the Vega Frontier Edition and RX Vega 64. The peak current of these cards exceeds the max output of many eGPU enclosures including the ASUS XG Station Pro with its 330W power brick. However, ASUS capitalized on the flexibility of using an external power source and created a clever power joining adapter. This Y adapter allows the XG Station Pro to draw power from two 330W AC power adapters, effectively doubling its output. Here’s an engineering sample to showcase this arrangement in action with the Vega FE.

Exploring this uncharted territory of stacking power adapters, I inquired with ASUS about whether there would be an alternate firmware for this Y adapter so that it would not only provide more output to the external graphics card but also carry higher power delivery to the host laptop. Again, Intel only approved the Thunderbolt firmware in this enclosure for 15W PD and that’s unlikely to change. As the external GPU enclosure market expands, I hope Intel grants users more choices in power outputs for different uses.

Beside lending design expertise, InWin provided cooling fans for the ASUS XG Station Pro. The fans are the non-LED versions of InWin Polaris 120mm lineup. ASUS chose this option because it’s possible to engage silent mode with these fans during light load. This is a remarkable feature no other eGPU enclosure has managed. For example, when paired with a graphics card that has Silent or Fan-Stop mode, this ASUS XG Station Pro produces exactly 0dB when idle. When the enclosure fans need to run (≥55˚C), they operate in the range of 500 to 1280 rpm and produce at most 20.2dB.

ASUS put a lot of thought into the usability of this XG Station Pro. It shows with little touches like the placement of the power button. It’s located in the back of enclosure above the power connector rather than inside as in the XG Station 2. Another example are the sleeved PCIe power cables. Handling these cables provides a premium touch over the typical rubber-shielded black and yellow wiring. Last but not least is the included 1.5m active 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 cable. It provides sufficient length to relocate the eGPU enclosure off your desk. All other eGFXs come with a .5m cable.

While it was an arduous process tearing down the XG Station 2, it was a joy taking apart the XG Station Pro. The only tool you need is a standard Phillips head screwdriver. All components are easily accessible. There’s a daughter board for the power plug and power button. The two 8-pin PCIe power headers sit side-by-side in the front third of the main board. Close by are two 4-pin PWM fan headers for the cooling fans. ASUS soldered ten LED diodes that run the entire length of the main board’s right edge. There’s another row of six tightly-placed LED diodes in the rear, mostly hidden from view.

The ASUS XG Station Pro‘s Thunderbolt 3 main board is much simpler compared to that of the Station 2. All crucial ICs are located near the rear ports and covered under a plastic shield to prevent damage during graphics card removal and insertion. As pictured below are Texas Instrument TPS65983 USB-C controller, Intel Alpine Ridge JHL6540 Thunderbolt 3 controller, and Winbond 25Q80DVNIG firmware memory chip.

Texas Instrument TPS65983 Usb-C Controller

Alpine Ridge JHL6540 Thunderbolt 3 Controller

Winbond 25Q80DVNIG firmware memory chip

Testings & Benchmarks

My first test was with a 2016 15″ MacBook Pro. In macOS, you can easily find information on the enclosure’s Power Delivery and Thunderbolt firmware version. The ASUS XG Station Pro comes with firmware version 29.1. Power Delivery is confirmed at 15W. This means ultrabooks with only one Thunderbolt port that also serves as the charging port wouldn’t be a good companion for the XG Station Pro.

The ASUS XG Station Pro is macOS certified. It’s fully compatible with High Sierra 10.13.4 and newer. Keep in mind Apple only officially supports external graphics for Thunderbolt 3 Macs paired with select AMD Radeon graphics cards. For example, pairing the Vega FE to this enclosure and my 2016 15″ MacBook Pro was a smooth process. Things start getting hairy when you have an older Thunderbolt Mac and/or want to use Nvidia eGPU. Our community has been following Goalque‘s development on EFI workaround to allow Nvidia eGPU in 10.13.4 and newer. Mac_editor has been improving his purge-wrangler script to enable eGPU access on Thunderbolt 1 and Thunderbolt 2 Macs. I was able to use both of these workarounds to pair an R9 Fury eGPU and a GTX 1080 Ti eGPU with my 2016 15″ MacBook Pro.

An interesting feature of this enclosure is the sole USB-C10 expansion port. It’s USB 3.1 gen 2 that’s capable of 10Gbps. This port raises the question whether ASUS had planned dual TB3 configuration for the XG Station Pro but ultimately granted one TB3 port due to eGFX certification requirements. Thunderbolt 3 external GPU enclosures with expansion I/O share bandwidth with those same ports (22Gbps cap by Intel). I paired a Samsung T5 external solid state drive to test this in ATTO Disk Benchmark. These screen captures show the eGPU’s Memory Read and Write were impinged when the external SSD transmitted data.

ASUS provides three software utilities in Windows for its XG Station eGPU enclosures. The first one is ASUS Hot Plug tool. This utility is unnecessary because both ASUS external graphics enclosures work fine without it, and it misidentifies the XG Station Pro as the XG Station 2. The next utility that’s a must is ROG AURA. You can control the RGB of the ASUS XG Station Pro as well as the RGB of ASUS graphics cards with AURA lighting. Here are some screen captures of the different options in AURA. OFF is possible.

ASUS Aura All Synced

ASUS Aura Temperature Mode

The third and final useful software utility is GPU Tweak II. You can use it to fine-tune and monitor a compatible graphics card. From my testing, the GPU fans outscream the enclosure’s fans during heavy load. Therefore setting the graphics card to silent mode using Tweak II helps reduce overall noise emission. This is of course only possible in Windows. In macOS the graphics card behaves accordingly to its factory default profile. I recommend non-reference cooler cards in Windows or macOS with Fan-Stop or Silent mode during idle and light work load.

ASUS Tweak II

The ASUS XG Station Pro is plug-and-play for Thunderbolt 3 Windows computers. I’ve tested with the 2017 Alienware 15 R3, 2017 Toshiba Portege X20WD, 2018 13″ Razer Blade Stealth, and 2018 HP Spectre 13. They all worked without issue. It’s also possible to use this eGFX with Macs in Windows. Due to Apple’s refusal to provide support for external GPU in Bootcamp, there’s an extensive setup procedure to make it work. Read our eGPU Bootcamp setup guide for Thunderbolt 3 MacBook Pro to learn the process and continue your eGPU adventure.

I was most interested in finding out the performance difference between the Alienware 15 R3’s discrete graphics card, GTX 1070 vs. the external graphics card, GTX 1080 Ti. Many have expressed concern about eGPU performance loss and diminishing returns when selecting a graphics card. I ran synthetic benchmarks (below) through this host in FHD, QHD, and UHD to provide more insight and hopefully help with your buying choices. The Alienware 15 R3 has a similar Thunderbolt 3 port configuration as the 2016 15″ MacBook Pro. The PCI Express Controller for the Thunderbolt 3 port on these two hosts attach directly to the processor. This routing provides a dedicated connection from the eGPU «» CPU unlike the most commonly found arrangement of eGPU «» PCH «» CPU in other hosts.

Conclusion

If the XG Station 2 was rebellious, hot-tempered and looking for attention in all the wrong places, the XG Station Pro has grown up and learned from its wayward brother. It’s not only a premium eGPU enclosure but also priced competitively at $330. While its lacks in portability, the ASUS XG Station Pro prioritizes the space inside for effective cooling. 0dB during light work load is an amazing achievement and will satisfy the most demanding of buyers. Other refinements such as its clean look, ease of use, and 1.5m Thunderbolt 3 cable make this eGFX one of the most compelling enclosures this year.

I’ve coil whine with the XG Station and a MSI 1060 GPU, too. – It helps if you start a programm which keeps the graphics card a tiny bit busy. For my graphics card it is enough to start Microsoft Word and coil wineing is gone. Not all programms are working ie. starting an Browser had no effect.

Awesome write-up! Would also love to see a seperate What’s In The Box (tho review does contain basically what’s there) kind of section for users interested in purchasing the enclosure. I for one keep an eye out for those that come with carrying cases (of which I’m only aware of Aorus lol).

Hello @TheITSage I would also explain in details how ASUS implemented the power delivery in this new eGPU enclosure. As far i know the 330Watt power brick is made by Delta, did not inquired on the precise model ASUS used, but it seems a decent branded power brick. I would not be much worried about the Delta brick against a normal Enermax SFX, even i would prefer having the last, but i would still had checked it’s T° after some hours of utilization. The brick output [email protected] equal to roughly 330Watt if one consider the power supply efficiency and T°.… Read more »

@wimpzilla The external AC power adapter is Delta ADP-330AB D. I took a photo of this power brick next to SFX to show the size of it. The photos on our website are minified to save bandwidth. CDN service for ten of thousands hits a day costs a bit. There are a few pictures of the power daughter board and Y adapter PCB. I will post those later.

@TheITSage Understood, i’m sorry you are right did not thought about the bandwidth. I’m sorry i misread, i thought was the ADP like, not the same model. No need to upload in the article, it you can just mp, for you if you are interested by a in depth circuit analysis. Found this new way to implement the power delivery quite original, just curious how they did it. I mean not someone else would not look at it someday and not i’m too curious to go check it by myself. ^^ As always, feel free to delete, add, move this… Read more »

I had some spare time and tried to work with the picture of the board pcb you posted. Usually in almost all eGPU enclosures big enough to get a psu, the power supply is done using the 12v provided by the psu. So the board would have different power planes dedicated to the 12v that feed the pci-e and feed some voltage regulators for the 3.3v/5v IC’s logics. What’s new in this ASUS enclosure is the way the power supply is managed, feeding the eGPU enclosure with 19.5v as a regular laptop. So as any laptop or small eGPU enclosure… Read more »

Thanks you. I was wrong on some aspect of the pcb, the picture greatly helped to sort out, i updated the picture you sent me. -What i thought the VRM controller is in reality an ITE IC, often designated as I/O controller also managing the t°, voltage, fans, current monitoring. -The main 3 phases VRM for the gpu 12v have doubled Hi side and Low side mosfets to help the current balance on the phase. -All the other minor rails needed as the 5/3.3v or lower, are provided by power stages, being a set of Hi/Lo mosfets integrated into a… Read more »

Posted by: wimpzilla Thanks you. I was wrong on some aspect of the pcb, the picture greatly helped to sort out, i updated the picture you sent me. -What i thought the VRM controller is in reality an ITE IC, often designated as I/O controller also managing the t°, voltage, fans, current monitoring. -The main 3 phases VRM for the gpu 12v have doubled Hi side and Low side mosfets to help the current balance on the phase. -All the other minor rails needed as the 5/3.3v or lower, are provided by power stages, being a set of Hi/Lo mosfets… Read more »

@lunchbox There’s no clearance inside the enclosure to mount the radiator from hybrid cards. The only possibility is to go with custom loop. There’s room in front of the main board. In my opinion, running a liquid cooled GPU negates the main appeal of this XG Station Pro (0dB).

I tested fitting the XG Station Pro with two hybrid cards I have, R9 Fury X and GTX 980 Ti. Here’s the build guide and some photos.

Usually small form factor enthusiasts use HDplex AC-DC unit paired with a DC-ATX board. They are small can powerful enough to drive an entire 8700k+1060 system. If we can fit them inside the case than we don’t need the huge power brick anymore.

The dimensions of the HDplex units are 198(D) x 58(W) x 40 (H) for the AC-DC and 160(L) x 51.5 (W) x 30 (H) mm for the DC-ATX

@quetzacoatl It’s possible but I doubt it’s a cleaner solution than what ASUS built. You can fabricate a mount for the HDplex units on the underside of the top cover. The next challenge is to make an adapter to power the Thunderbolt main board with the HDplex DC-ATX board.

Thank you for the information. By the way, I wonder what’s the weight of the Delta brick? I may need to chose between the XG station pro and the Razer core v2, and their actual travel weight is crucial since they have a similar dimension.

Do you know if there has been any changes to the availability of the y-adapter yet? I really this enclosure to pair with my 2018 Mac Mini but the Max GPU power of 300W is the only drawback for me. The Y-adapter is a clever solution but I wonder if they will even release it. Hope so!

Posted by: RobertRitter
I’ve coil whine with the XG Station and a MSI 1060 GPU, too. – It helps if you start a programm which keeps the graphics card a tiny bit busy. For my graphics card it is enough to start Microsoft Word and coil wineing is gone. Not all programms are working ie. starting an Browser had no effect.

I have nasty coil whine from my Rx580 as well. I’m wondering if using an external power brick means lower quality power feeding through.

Is there anything on the chassis where a laptop lock and/or cable could be attached/looped through? For use with something like this for example: https://www.kensington.com/us/us/v/7164/1686/combination-laptop-locks

@itsage Thanks. I know there’s no actual lock slot but was just curious if there were any easily accessible external protrusions that could serve a similar purpose. It looks like on the XG Station Pro one would have to remove a side panel and thread the cable through part of the frame. Is there any less invasive way to secure it that you can think of without involving the removal of any panels? Reason I ask is I’m currently using a Mantiz Venus and it’s simple enough to loop the cable through the lower section that serves as the “foot”… Read more »

I just received an XG Station Pro today. Installed a two year old 980ti from EVGA. Connected to my Lenovo Legion y720 laptop in the hopes I’d be able to use both the internal 1060 and the 980ti for rendering in Blender. Plugging in an running the XG S Pro disables the internal card with no work around from Asus or Lenovo. I’m assuming there just aren’t enough PCIe lanes… if anyone knows otherwise, I’d love to hear it!

Posted by: goalque Just acquired a brand new XG Station Pro. I couldn’t resist modding 😀 Is there a way to control fan speeds on macOS? I just got mine today too and set it up with a Asus Strix RX 580. I was really impressed with the packaging and the look of the chassis. So far it’s working well. I just wish there was a way for me to control the LEDs from MacOS and if I could get 60W power delivery but it sounds like the last one is an Intel limitation. LED control of the eGPU +… Read more »

I agree, a well-finished product. Approximately the same size as HL23T, a bit pricier. Power delivery isn’t a big issue in my opinion if you prefer 0 dB total silence. I recall the EU regulations disallow more powerful external PSUs. I wish there were internal mounting points for an HDPLEX 400W in front, as in A4-SFX v3.

I suppose so, there is room for ~6.5cm wide cards (including the backplate). The dimensions from the Asus web site: 29.97 x 13.04 x 5.41 cm. This would be a perfect companion because you should be able to connect the dual In Win fans to 4-pin FanConnect II headers of the card.

Posted by: goalque Posted by: xxxxx451 can you fit a strix 2080 inside (2.7 slots wide) ? I suppose so, there is room for ~6.5cm wide cards (including the backplate). The dimensions from the Asus web site: 29.97 x 13.04 x 5.41 cm. This would be a perfect companion because you should be able to connect the dual In Win fans to 4-pin FanConnect II headers of the card. thanks for the reply. I just saw that the Aorus RX580 XTR fits (5.464 cm) so the strix 2080 ti should fit easily. I hope 5.8 cm will work too as… Read more »

do you think it’s possible to remove this part somehow ? I’m hesistant to make a blind pre-order since RTX cards are still very expensive at this point.
would you be kind enough to share a close up image on this area ?
alternatively, could you measure the remaining space between the metal part and your current card setup ?
thanks

So in order to read the output of a VRM you need to probe with the multimeter the output of the VRM choke, as you did with the green point. One side of the choke is output, the other side is linked to the mosfets. The decoupling caps after the choke are also a good probing point, but i don’t know precisely which one are used for the decoupling. Dunno if it use the SMD or the normal polymer caps for decoupling, you need to test the continuity between the components, you should have mosfets>choke>decoupling cap>load. The other thing you… Read more »

Posted by: wimpzilla The other thing you need to check is if the 2 unused 8pin connectors link also elsewhere on the pcb or if these are only linked to the other 8pin connectors. It become interesting only if these unused 8pin power up also the TB logic and disable the other unused VRM when so, allowing you to run the board out of a PSU. They are linked to the 12V points of the x16 slot (a short beep sound, had to swap the red/black probes of the multimeter to hear the sound again, a capacitor between?). EDIT: I… Read more »

Appreciated your input (I am not an electrical engineer). I chose the probing points randomly. The section near the main IO socket (18.8V) is covered by a shield and would not like to remove it.

I couldn’t find other 12V points yet (except the x16 slot). There seems to be a capacitor between the 8pins because I heard only a short beep sound during the continuity test but the sound was continuous between the marked yellow lines.

I could try powering the board carefully from those unused 8pins to see if voltage conversion works inversely.

No please don’t, it’s NOT a good idea at all, if there is not a decent circuit that manage to cut the other VRM compartment. You will for sure send 12v to the gpu but also send 12v to then entire output VRM power plane, not sure it will be nice. ^^ As said above i just conclude these are another power plane design to where to mount the 8 pin gpu output. So don’t plug any PSU anywhere on this board. ^^ You can’t find the 12v because the probe point are under the pcb, the big 3 choke… Read more »

It mean that there is no control over the voltage imo and the board can’t be powered using the read unused 8 pin. It confirm what i was saying before, the 12v power plane is shared by the major 3 VRM assembly, the one with the big squared grey inductor/choke. In fact you found one output of the 12v VRM i was speaking before, the top right big soldering point is the leg of the choke, the next bellow the decoupling cap. It feed then the pci-e socket and some of the components of the TB chip. Dunno why you… Read more »

I was hopeful too tbh, i thought too maybe i would be possible to power the board using these unused 8 pin with an external psu. But these are just a power plane design, to have the output connectors arranged in another way. Thank you for your testing, you cleared this question that i had long time ago. 😉 Maybe you can reach Asus and get the power supply slitter to use 2 brick psu to power the enclosure, then check again if there is any change when you read the voltages. Also check if the mosftes get hot, if… Read more »

Will be this enclosure enough to power the new Asus Strix RTX 2080 ti OC? I know this is 300W GPU max power and the new RTX 2080 ti is 275W, so not sure if the OC will push to the limit this enclosure. Thanks!

@itsage I asked Asus Tech Support and the said it does. But still I feel the question mark… I decided to go for the Nvidia RTX 2080 TI Founders Edition which is 260 Watts. The shipping is scheduled for the 10/18. Once I have iand install it, I will keep you posted. I just sold my Asus Strix GTX 1080 TI which didn’t have anything wrong. Just wanted to experience with the RTX technology which seems impressive.

@theitsage Finally got the Nvidia RTX 2080 TI Founders Edition and installed to my Asus XG-STATION-PRO and it works fine. Idle temperature shows between 28 and 36 C. And playing mode (Call of Duty Black Ops) shows between 55 & 65 C. The fans work all the time but not noisy in my room which pretty quiet mostly. See pictures!

@sharpk18, have you ever run into any issues running the RTX 2080 ti FE in the Asus XG Station Pro since you posted the last update? I am concerned that peak power draw on the RTX 2080ti can go to just under 330 watts. Since the review states that power delivery to the GPU is only 300 watt, will this (no supplying enough for peak draw) cause any issues? Thanks for any wisdom you can provide.

@ishikawa_goemon Performance issues, I didn’t have any. The only thing different than an Asus GTX 1080 TI I used to own and run on the same eGPU is that the RTX 1080 TI FE funs run at full speed when booting my MacBook Pro system.

I actally contacted Nvidia Tech Support and they said it is okay that the funs run at full speed. It is a self-diagnosed at booting. Other than that all is fine.

@theitsage My Nvidia RTX 2080 TI FE Fans Spinning full speed at booting and randomly. It does for a minute, then runs normally. The temperatures are between 25 & 65 Celsius so far. I asked Nvidia Tech Support and they said that that card spin at full speed is normal for auto-testing. They also said that the RTX 2080 TI FE is not made to run on eGPU. Said it was tested only to run on an PC and/or workstation.

Posted by: sharpk18 @theitsage My Nvidia RTX 2080 TI FE Fans Spinning full speed at booting and randomly. It does for a minute, then runs normally. The temperatures are between 25 & 65 Celsius so far. I asked Nvidia Tech Support and they said that that card spin at full speed is normal for auto-testing. They also said that the RTX 2080 TI FE is not made to run on eGPU. Said it was tested only to run on an PC and/or workstation. What do you think? Razer CS said also Razer Core isn’t compatible with Rtx cards, i used 2080ti, two… Read more »

@sharpk18 Thank you for sharing your findings. I noticed the cooling fans run full speed at initialization on both RTX 2070 and 2080 FE cards. I think they are normal behavior. Before the cards can work, there’s a brief delay for the system to provide a handshake with eGPU enclosure.

@goalque do you think it’s possible to mod the power switch on the enclosure to add something similar to a 24pin PSU short? I use a bat switch with a 3′ cable on the PSU for my thunder2 setup and was hoping to do something similar if I upgrade to this so I don’t have to unplug and plug every time I need to reboot.

It happens (especially) during MacOSX normal idle work, that the enclosure fan start and stop all the time. They are not going very fast, only a second or two. And it’s not very loud, but you notice them switching on and off.
So I have two questions:
1) Do you know this effect, too?
2) Is there any way on MacOSX to change the fan-behaviour? I would prefer them going on less often and when, then longer, not only for 1 second or so.

Does anybody know, what these extension cables for the fans are called? Are these 4-pin y-cables? I would like to try to plug the XG Station Pro cables directly to the Asus Vega 56, as it has two connections for fans (but the fan cables are to short, so I need an extension).

@sharpk18, thank you for taking the time to share your experience. For reference, I have the same issue with my RTX 2080ti FE fans spinning at full speed during boot. This happened in a Razer Core X system as well. This lends credence to what Nvidia is telling us concerning it being a self-diagnostic test. The only times I had issues with the GPU fans just going full speed for a long time was if there was a connection issue with the TB3 port (e.g. not fully seated so the eGPU was getting power but maybe no good data connection)… Read more »

“These screen captures show the eGPU’s Memory Read and Write were impinged when the external SSD transmitted data” This is true, but there is to add that it does hardly change the “real” performance. E.g. in Benchmarks from Unigine the loss is even not measurable. That is to be expected as they hard fill the complete bandwidth from Host 2 Device. The main work is done by the GPU and the main data is between GPU and monitor. Furthermore, it’s rare that SSD and GPU have full load at the same time. So in conclusion there is no real performance… Read more »

Man, how I wish i would have found this page before ordering the XG Pro lol….. have not opened it yet, but i see the 15w PD and all I can do is Sigh. Wonder though, on a Macbook pro 13 with the screen turned off, and GPU no longer in use would the 15w of PD be just enough to keep the battery from draining?

It would depend on what the other components of the laptop are doing. I know if you have it connected in sleep mode, the 15W can charge the battery slowly. During certain usage the 15W PD can keep the battery from draining. If you need real power delivery you’d need an enclosure with at least 45W PD.

Thanks for the info, back in the shipping box it goes….. unfortunately like you said I need more juice to make this a 1 cable solution. Build quality is beautiful to say the least but man what a let down on PD.

Has there been any word on the dual power supply adapter? It’s been a few months from release and I was thinking of switching over to AMD since those Nvidia drivers are no where in sight on macOS. I intend to run a Vega 64 or Radeon VII.

Posted by: chinsteig
Has there been any word on the dual power supply adapter? It’s been a few months from release and I was thinking of switching over to AMD since those Nvidia drivers are no where in sight on macOS. I intend to run a Vega 64 or Radeon VII.

@chinsteig
What makes you think that the Radeon VII won’t work with the Asus XG Station Pro?

Posted by: chinsteig Posted by: OliverB @chinsteig What makes you think that the Radeon VII won’t work with the Asus XG Station Pro? I haven’t seen any build guides using the Radeon VII in this enclosure so I’m not sure if the peak draw would overload it or not. It’s pretty expensive in Canada still so I’m not sure I would be using it over the Vega 64 or going through the hassle of testing it. This article has the peak draw in some applications up to 330w: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vii-vega-20-7nm,5977-5.html and this one has it pretty close to the limit:… Read more »

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3 months ago

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Diego

do you know if i can fit this card? GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8G Graphics Card, WINDFORCE Stack it has this dimensions: L=290 W=134.31 H=59.9 mm